Mine Asteroids for Profit?

[Chalenge]

The recent discovery of water on Mars had us all discussing things a lot of people probably never think about and why NASA does what it does and what motivates them to do it. Spectrometry was something I used to study and so the asteroids were a natural interest of mine and thats why I was so interested in mining them. Maverick got me thinking about this again in all his questions so I have been spending a lot of time researching it again. When I was younger I was even more of a nerd then I am now and I belonged to clubs that spent weekends studying space and electronics and then computers and anything else geeky that came along. So when the subject came up I found myself googling subjects I had long forgotten or given up. I am like a lot of other people because I think back on my life and wish I had done things a little differently and maybe just maybe I would have been more involved in space or kept up my hobbies in spectrometry and done something there. So I want to thank Maverick for sparking that old interest again 

And here are links on the subject for anyone interested to consider (I could follow links on the subject for days).

http://spacemonitor.blogspot.com/2007/06/why-mine-asteroid-belt.html

http://www.permanent.com/

You may find the undiscovered potential for wealth very very appealing but its the things we dont know that make it even more worthwhile!

[moot]

The things we don't know, but will know thanks to successfuly exploited wealth, are larger than what we will know otherwise...  For now the first order is to reduce the cost of access to space. That's the foremost barrier.  Other things such as going to mars or NEOs are already feasible by optimization approaches (of current hardware) such as slow boost of lots of hardware (for TMI) to EDO by ion propulsion a long while ahead of the actual manned transport(s).. Then it's a matter of dealing with the worst problems like solar radiation and excessively fast NEO rotation.  Those are probably cheaper and simpler to resolve.

[Chalenge]

Of course what I meant to say was that discovering the unknown and the secrets that unlocks will be worthwhile then the profits anyone gains. I look at Mars and in the back of my mind I imagine the settlements there as ghost towns in the old west are today. Curious points for future generations but otherwise not very meaningful. Mining asteroids and using materials to build permanent stations on the moon and departure stations around earth will go a lot further in my mind.

[Maverick]

Until and unless (IMO) we have a functional base on the Moon with a sustainable habitat, going further is an exercise in futility. The moon will give us a low gravity well to use for launching vehicles to other points of interest with far far lower cost than launching from Earth does now.

If we can establish and maintain a habitat on the moon we can then think about long term efforts elsewhere. If we can't make it on the moon then we really have no business trying to do so elsewhere in even more strenuous conditions on an even longer supply chain. A space station is a nice thing but it has no chance of being self sustaining. It lack the resource basis to make essential items on it's own and needs constant resupply to function.

To me, the moon is the baby step to be followed by other exploration / exploitation.

[Chalenge]

I look at a permanent space station as a terminal for something like the elevated train systems we have in our big cities. From there we have specialized transports to the moon. If you read up on solar sails you would know that you could use them for moon landing/departure by putting lasers on the surface to accelerate landers up or down from the surface. It would save us a lot of resources in the long run.